Personal development: OECD’s social and emotional skills. Is it science?

‘Platform Education 2032’ is a committee installed by Dutch education minister Sander Dekker. The Committee, chair Paul Schnabel, reported to the minister on the kind of curriculum that would prepare students well for the year 2032 (and further).

Ben Wilbrink, May 17, 2016

‘Personal development’ is at the top of the list of the Platform, yet it is difficult to gather what exactly that personal development might be. Exemplary for the fuzzy writing in the report is this quote

A relevant curriculum
The personal development of students draws upon all components of the curriculum and demands education which is relevant and meaningful to the student. It should invite and encourage the student to ask questions, to probe on the basis of his own creativity and curiosity, thus developing enterprise and flexibility. At an early age, the student will learn to take and act upon his responsibility. He will feel engaged and appreciated.

The report does not explain much, the only references being to two OECD reports on social and emotional skills. Those skills get mixed up, in the Platform report as well as in OECD 2015d, with curiosity and creativity; curiosity and creativity seem to be the key to everything, influence of Sir Ken Robinson? Questions on scientific underpinnings of this personal development thing then boil down to the even bigger questions of scientific underpinnings of OECD positions. This blog will not give any answers, instead it will do some preparatory work by noting some peculiarities in the OECD position. For an impression of that position, read this post by OECD’s Andreas Schleicher, summarizing the review findings in the OECD (2015f) report. A quote from that text exempt of anything that might be recognizable as scientific humility:

[The report] documents methods to measure social and emotional skills and it uses innovative analytical methods to show how social and emotional skills are drivers of social outcomes, such as health, civic engagement, and subjective well-being.

Perhaps most importantly, the report indicates that social and emotional skills are not just measurable, but also malleable. That means that schools, families and communities can play an active role in fostering these skills, they can be taught at home and school through adequate practices.

Scanning the OECD 2015f report, it is perfectly clear that there are at least two big issues regarding its scientific standing. The very first issue is the position of economists publishing on ‘non-cognitive skills’. The Bereiter-Scardamalia quote in the preceding blog already made it clear that ‘non-cognitive skills’ do not exist: there is no such thing as ‘non-cognitive’, and personality traits surely are not skills. It might just be the case that psychological claims by economists such as Heckman, Borghans and Ter Weel lack scientific grounding. Of course, economists can use results from psychological research. Research by Angela Duckworth on what she calls ‘grit’, or Carol Dweck on ‘growth mindset’, seems to be irresistible to scientists not schooled in psychology and its methodology. What economists, and the Platform Onderwijs 2032, conclude from psychological research might just be somewhat problematic, future blogs will have to go into that question. In the meantime: read some blogs that are critical on ‘non-cognitive skills’, see at the end of the references section. Today’s post by Kirschner & Neelen on motivation in education, for example, offers an apt illustration of misuse of the motivation concept, and of its debunking.

The second issue in the OECD report is the question whether these correlations of personality and measures of success in school and life are causal relations? If they are, which is not at all probable, the next question must be whether these personality characteristics can be influenced, trained, nudged, whatever. Can they? Psychologist intuition says there is not much room for influencing of any sort. Let alone the ethics of such invasion of privacy.
The idea of character education is not a new one, of course. Some critical thinking on the malleability of character by Edward L. Thorndike in his 1903 Educational Psychology: it is easy for educators to get the impression that character growth is a result of education, even if in fact education does contribute little or nothing. Personal development in the school years is an issue that lends itself to empirical research. The question then is: what does the research tell us about it? We know already what OECD’s Schleicher thinks of this question, or rather of its answers. Let’s however investigate ourselves, in a series of blogs to come.

some references from the OECD reviews, and related ones

Now, where are those soft skills economists like Heckman (and in his following the OECD) are boasting of? Read the article: no grit, no mindfulness, no growth mindset to be found. Conscientiousness, one of the Big Five personality factors: no relation with intelligence.

A useful but technocratic — ethical concerns are absent — review of the literature. Noncognitive skills here are, for example, attitudes, personality characteristics. Problematic are the causal roles attributed to noncognitive skills (no scientific support). For example, the opening sentence of the Summary and Conclusions section: “The importance of noncognitive attributes, such as personality attitudes and values, and social, emotional and self-management skills has long been acknowledged because of their role in driving success in education and in the workplace.” I am not sure what Kyllonen is hinting at here: does he only mention a piece of folk psychology, or does he himself believe in this causal relation and its direction? In the balance: this is a highly informative chapter, gives many crucial insights. Keep thinking critically, however, while reading. For example, mention is made of publications by Heckman and others, without any indication of the tense relation, if a relation there is, with mainstream psychological and educational research.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2015). Skills for Social Progress: The Power of Social and Emotional Skills. Paris: OECD Publishing. get pdf f

Increasing deciles of cognitive skills has a strong impact on enhancing access to education and labour market outcomes, while increasing deciles of social and emotional skills has a strong impact on improving social outcomes such as health, experience of anti-social behaviour and subjective well-being. (…) Successful interventions tend to focus on raising skills that enable people to achieve goals, work with others and manage emotions, with conscientiousness, sociability and emotional stability appearing particularly important. [from the lead, chapter 2]

Social and emotional skills play a particularly important role in skills formation since they not only drive future development of social and emotional skills but also cognitive skills. (…) Programmes specifically designed to raise social and emotional skills in schools have shown positive results in the short term but there are rarely long-term rigorous evaluations. [from the lead, chapter 4 Learning contexts that drive skills formation

David S. Yaeger, Carol S. Dweck, and others (2016). Using design thinking to improve psychological interventions: The case of the growth mindset during the transition to high school.Journal of Educational Psychology, 108, 374-391. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/edu0000098 Special Section: Motivating Classroom Learning. researchgate

Before I revealed my concerns about the generalised claims about growth mindsets, Carol said that in every session she talked about under what conditions growth mindset can work, what kinds of people it best works with, and she noted that developing a “growth mindset is the most fixed mindset idea” of the lot.

Alfie Kohn (August 16, 2015). The perils of “Growth Mindset” education: Why we’re trying to fix our kids when we should be fixing the system. How a promising but oversimplified idea caught fire, then got coopted by conservative ideology. blog

Its origins are in psychological theories that emphasize personal qualities and character strengths rather than challenging the social, political and economic determinants of inequalities in student outcomes, and which are now shaping practices in classrooms at large scale. [Social Emotional Learning] SEL is the focus for concerted lobbying by organizations which wish to hold schools accountable to standardized social-emotional outcomes, and which have begun to script standards for SEL programs and applications. It has become a priority for policy influencers and government departments which see SEL interventions as ways of cultivating “valuable” qualities in young people — such as military-style service or skills for the digital economy.